LIBERALS CRACK THE WHIP ON CIA-CHILE ISSUE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP09T00207R001000020011-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: October 12, 1974
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01 000020011 -1
12 O CT 1974
'. Liberals Crack the Whip on CIA-Chile Issue
By WILLIAM A. RUSHER
The great organs of liberal opinion in
America-in the press, on television, and
elsewhere-are. making a terrible foo-
faraw over the leaked revelation that the
CIA secretly spent S8 million in Chile
during, the period 1970-73 in support of
parties, newspapers and unions opposed
to the Marxist regime of the late Sal-
vador Allende,
My fellow-columnist Joe Kraft, taking
issue with President Ford's defense of
the CIA involvement, came through with
a particularly spectacular display of
journalistic muscle-flexing. Declaring
-on what evidence, he didn't say-that
the country is,K;~.deeply divided" over
such activities, Kraft warned,bluntly:
"President Ford is going to have to
take account. of those divisions. He will
have to try to understand the other
side. Otherwise he will end up, as his
two predecessors did, limping out of the
White House."
How's that for cracking the whip?
No nonsense there about presidential
misdeeds-just the crisp order of
a liberal journalist to a President
,getting out of line: Shape up, or ship
out.
Still, let us try to consider the issue
of Chile and the CIA on its merits.
To dispose of a collateral point first,
it simply won't do to argue that Con-
gress was deceived about the matter.
The CIA's activities are necessarily
confidential in large part, and Congress,
recognizing this, has long agreed that
its operations shall be monitored by a
special "Watchdog Committee" com-
posed of supposedly close-mouthed sen-
ior members of the House and Senate.
This committee had every opportunity
to probe the agency's Chilean operations
as deeply as it wanted to, and if (as some
critics are now charging) it "failed to
watch the dog" closely enough, Congress
has nobody to blame.but itself.
But what about the substantive issue?
Was the CIA (or rather the U.S. gov-
ernment, for which it works) simply
wrong to meddle in Chilean politics at
all'.'
Note that President Ford, in his recent
press conference, forcefully denied that
this country played any role whatever in
the milltarv coup that ultimately over-
threw Allende. According to Mr. Ford,
our intervention was confined to the per-
iod before the coup, and consisted solely
of helping opposition elements to sur-
vive. But is even such support justified?
Many liberals, stressing that Allende
was legally elected (though he received,
in the multi-party contest, fewer votes
than Goldwater got in 1964), insist it was
not.
One wonders what sort of world they
live in. Both the Soviet Union and Red
China spend hundreds of millions of dol-
lars every year on clandestine support
of friendly politicians, parties, news-
papers, unions and other institutions in
every non-Communist country on earth.
So do all the major nations on our side
of the Iron Curtain.
To take only the most spectacular
example, there is scarcely a politician in
black Africa today who isn't receiving
cash payments from at least one foreign
power, and frequently from two or more
(often, incidentally, including South
Africa.) The same is true, in everything
but degree, of most of Asia and Latin
America.
One may-I do-disapprove of this
state of affairs; but no important nation
on earth could conceivably protect its
legitimate interests in today's world
without supporting its foreign friends
against their (and its) enemies.
By seeking to prevent this country
from doing so, liberals such as Kraft
are simply insuring that Uncle Sam
will hereafter climb into the ring
with one hand tied securely behind
his back.
On one of the late Nikita Khrushchev's
trips to this country, he formally pro-
posed to Allen Dulles, then head of the
CIA, that the U.S. and the USSR.
should, as an economy measure, pool
their payments to all the third parties
who were taking money from both sides.
Fair enough; but it surely never oc-
curred to Khrushchev that, if he was
just patient, one group of influential
Americans would start agitating for the
United States to abandon its true friends
altogether, and leave whole nations to
the mercies of the well-financed admirers
of the Soviet Union.
Approved For Release 2011/08/09: CIA-RDP09TOO207RO01 000020011 -1